KARACHI: Relatives of two persons, said to be involved in the Karachi Police Office (KPO) attack, staged a protest demonstration outside the Chhipa morgue in Abyssinia Lines on Tuesday against their killing in what they alleged a ‘fake’ encounter.

On Monday, the Counter-Terrorism Department claimed to have killed two suspected militants of the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan in an alleged encounter on the outskirts of the metropolis. It claimed that both the men had masterminded the KPO attack.

On Tuesday, several relatives of the deceased persons reached the mortuary to receive their bodies. They staged a protest and blocked the road for vehicular traffic.

Ghulam Qadir Khan, father of Aryadullah, told the media that his son had recently graduated from a seminary in Gulshan-i-Maymar while Waheed was a Hafiz-i-Quran.

He said that they were travelling on a motorbike on March 7 when men in plain clothes picked them near Sohrab Goth.

An uncle of Waheed told the media that his nephew was innocent and the police killed him in a fake encounter. They demanded justice for the slain persons.

However, senior CTD official Raja Umer Khattab claimed in a statement: “We have evidence that they were facilitators of the three militants who attacked the KPO.”

He stated that the CTD got the footage in which both Aryadullah and Waheed were seen with the three attackers.

“We hope that a particular narrative will not be strengthened during this war against terrorism,” he said, without directly addressing the charge of a fake encounter.

Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2023